GPU sales are looked at as an
indicator of how well the overall computer market is doing since all
computers today ship with a GPU of some sort be it of the discrete or
integrated variety. So far, 2009 has been a rough year for GPU
makers.

Typically, GPU makers would be disappointed with no
significant growth, but with the poor economy, it's a welcome change
from the significant declines other quarters have seen. Jon Peddie
Research (JPR) has unveiled its latest
numbers for the add-in GPU industry for Q2 2009. The numbers show
that 16.81 million add-in units were shipped, up 3% from the previous
quarter and down 15% from the same quarter in 2008.

Inventories
had to be replenished over Q2 and JPR estimates that the
replenishment at least shadowed consumption or was a bit higher. With
the poor economy still hurting many consumers, sales in the GPU
market moved downstream. Most of the growth in the GPU market was in
the integrated segment with a 4% year-over-year increase in shipments
for the quarter. Lower cost discrete cards also saw modest
improvements according to JPR with higher cost discrete cards taking
the worst the quarter had to offer.

The quarter was the first
where AMD finally started to gain back some share from NVIDIA. JPR
reports that AMD's unit share rose from 31% in Q1 to 35% in Q2 with
NVIDIA seeing their share decline the same 4% to 64% overall. That
means that AMD took every bit of its growth from NVIDIA's
marketshare. NVIDIA and Intel GPU shipments did rebound
slightly in Q1 2009.

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What is better for Laptops and which company has a better driver support for laptops?

I hate it when I buy a laptop that there is no way I can install official drivers because the manufacturer of the laptop hasn't released any new drivers for years.

I had to use Omega Drivers. Why can't they support some guy who would do unsupported drivers for them for laptops?

I believe laptops are the future. They have more sales right now and yet their graphics cards and drivers support are severely lacking in power, support and features or they get too hot and are come to the market much later then the desktop cards.

Actually, no. I own a Dell M1530 and even with its "paltry" 8600 GPU and T9300 CPU, the laptop's LCD that it drives is at 1920x1200 and it plays everything I play on my desktop, at reasonable settings. If my laptop, which is over a year old now, can do that, then laptops will be just fine.

What people as a whole fail to realize is that the market is going to shift even more so to laptops, and those that think that won't ever happen are the same ones who think SATA is an acronym for sitting on your ass.

You'd be a fool to think that mobile gaming won't explode more than it already has. Once they become more pervasive, the price points will come down and we'll be buying laptops for everything.

My laptop can do 3/4 of what my desktop can do - technology has gotten small & fast enough at this point to comfortably do so. It's only going to get better. It's not completely here yet, but it will be soon. I'm just glad you aren't running a gaming PC company - none I know of at least.

If I had the option, I also would have gone ATI/AMD in the laptop to coincide with the Ph-2 940 / Radeon HD 4870 on my desktop. I'm extremely happy with the platform AMD has designed, and it's more than capable for everything I throw at it - so is the laptop, but to a lesser degree. Almost, not quite there.

Honestly an 8600m paired with a T9300 is not going to play anything recent with any real quality settings at that resolution. Even Fear 1 is unplayable on that at anything over 1680x1050. So, did you mean flash based games? Even $3,000 gaming laptops with 4870 CF setups can barely play games like Oblivion (4 years old) at 1920x1080.

Sure, laptops have come a long way, but in no way do they cater to a gaming experience. I don't even have to mention battery life when gaming.